"Meg Whitman, eBay's former chief executive, will likely be named to lead Hewlett-Packard after markets close on Thursday, according to a person familiar with board decisions. The decision to replace Leo Apotheker, the company's chief executive, after only 11 months on the job is all but made, lacking only a final vote, said the person, who is not authorized to speak for the board. While Mr. Apotheker is going, his strategy, including consideration of spinning off H.P.'s personal computer business from other parts of the company, will remain in place."

stabilise the WebOS userbase. Hp lost a lot of money but now have a Massive userbase from nowhere. I think they will look to take advantage of this and do something clever with WebOS (licence/open source is my guess, they will make the money back via the store)